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Mastering Reading Strategies for Academic Writing

Learn effective reading strategies for academic purposes, including close reading and analyzing the rhetorical situation. Explore techniques such as underlining, annotation, summarizing, and more to enhance your comprehension and critical thinking skills.

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Mastering Reading Strategies for Academic Writing

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  1. Chapter 2 Reading for Academic Purposes: Analyzing the Rhetorical Situation

  2. Overview • The chapter looks at two ways of reading, with two sets of strategies: • Strategies for close reading • Strategies to analyze the rhetorical situation • It includes an essay by Jonathan Kozol as a writing sample and then demonstrates the various strategies using that essay.

  3. Two Sets of Strategies • Strategies for close reading help you understand what a text says and means, as well as how a writer presents ideas and conveys meaning. • Strategies to analyze the rhetorical situation, referring to the larger context of issues, andhow a writer identifies and responds to thecall to write.

  4. Reading… is it Active or Passive? • Reading is more than letting your eyes glance across the page. • The first set of strategies enable you to become a more active reader.

  5. Strategies for Close Reading • Reading is research, whether it is done to prepare to write a formal paper or decide which movie to go see with friends. • Your reading style is tied to your purpose and the context of the situation. • The purpose of this set of strategies is to equip you to do active and critical reading.

  6. Strategies for Close Reading • Underlining • Annotation • Summarizing • Exploratory writing • Outlining • Describing the writer’s strategy

  7. Strategy One: Underlining • Underline words and phrases to help identify key points and main ideas. • The text encourages selective use, so don’t underline too much.

  8. Strategy Two: Annotation • Annotation refers to comments written in the margins; the purpose is to keep you actively engaged as you read. Several suggestions include: • Point out key features and ideas • Agree or disagree with the writer • Raise questions • Draw connections

  9. Benefits of Annotation • Annotation is one of the most powerful skills you can develop; the key ideas you identify should make it much easier to construct an outline. • It helps you to master the content.

  10. Strategy Three: Summarizing • Condenses material to focus on the key ideas; generally the summary is half or less the length of the original content. • The text lists five steps on page 36. • This section presents a sample summary of the reading about the homeless.

  11. Strategy Four: Exploratory Writing • Also called freewriting, the purpose is to use what you’ve read for a starting point, and then just write nonstop for five to 10 minutes. • Don’t stop writing to fix, edit or revise; just see where your ideas take you before stopping to read what you’ve read.

  12. Strategy Five: Outlining • Creating an outline helps you see how writers have organized or structured their material. • See page 38 for a sample outline of the reading about the homeless. • Outlines reveal the relationship of ideas, with main ideas as Roman numerals and the supporting details as Arabic numbers.

  13. Strategy Six:Describing the Writer’s Strategy • This strategy builds on the outline of key ideas, which helps you to analyze the organization by describing how the writer connects the parts. • It takes a look at the overall purpose of a document. To do this, divide the document into sections, grouping paragraphs together that fit together and label each section and identify its function. See the sample, page 40.

  14. Writing Strategies • See the box on page 40 for the complete list. • It lists a dozen strategies that include narration, description, illustration, definition, compare/contrast, and explanation of causes and effects.

  15. Combining Both Sets of Strategies • The first set of strategies helps you understand the content of the document. • The second set helps you to understandits context.

  16. Analyzing the Rhetorical Situation • Use background information about the context of issues, the writer, and the publication to better understand the essay or document. • The purpose of this is to examine the writer’s purpose and relationship to the readers. • It also includes looking at the writer’s use of language (tone, denotation, figures of speech, and stereotypes).

  17. Sample Rhetorical Analysis • See the article by Kevin Powell, “My Culture at the Crossroads,” which first appeared in Newsweek magazine. • It is followed by a student sample of a rhetorical analysis; it is annotated to point out the features and show how the writer pulled the ideas together.

  18. Writing Assignment • The assignment is to find a persuasive article and then analyze its rhetorical situation, and write an essay that presents your analysis. • More details are found on pages 54-55; your instructor will let you know whether your class will be doing this particular assignment, and provide you with additional guidelines.

  19. Student Companion Website • Go to the student side of the Web site for exercises, chapter overviews, and links to writing resources for this chapter: http://college.hmco.com/pic/trimbur4e

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